These Huge Rats Can Sniff Out Land Mines
Oct. 7, 2015 - A group in Cambodia is using Gambian giant rats to find the nearly two million
land mines spread out across the country. These UXOs (unexploded ordnances) injure hundreds of people every year. The rats are adept at sniffing out TNT and pointing their human companions to where the danger lies. The rodents don't set off the
mines because they're too light, and they can clear a hundred-square-meter area in under 30 minutes, much faster than a human can.
Click here to read more:
"
Meet the Giant Rats That Are Sniffing out Landmines"
BUNTHOURN THEAP, OPERATION COORDINATOR, APOPO CAMBODIA:
We
bring the Gambian giant rats from Africa to sniff out the land mines in
Cambodia. There are two million land mines spread out in Cambodia. Two to three hundred people get injured by land mines and
UXOs [unexploded ordnance] every year.
MARK SHUKURU,
TECHNICAL ADVISER, APOPO TANZANIA:
These rats look similar to the rats we know. The difference
is these are wild rats. They are not the rats that used to be in our houses. So
they are bigger than the normal rats that we know.
The rats are faster than humans. Why are they faster?
Because the rats are only going for the TNT smell, and a human using his metal
detector is going for all kinds of metals.
So for a 5-by-20-meter
box … If you’re a rat,
the rat can finish the box in 16 minutes to 25 minutes only. And if you use the
manual metal detector, it can take two days or three days to finish it.
Some of you, you click too fast. Too fast.
A dog, you can tell a dog to sit, it can sit. You can tell a
dog to go, it can go. But a rat cannot understand all those kinds of things. So
we only communicate with them by using a clicker.
You have to leave the rat to indicate freely for quite some
time, and then you click.
BUNTHOURN THEAP:
When the rat smells TNT, it starts to scratch. And then the
handler has to click and give food to the rat.
When they start to scratch, I feel very, very emotional. I
get … very, very excited.
They don’t
know who is who. They don’t
know. They know only the click and food.
MARK SHUKURU:
Now I’m
attached with the rats. If I see, for instance, a rat on the road that’s been hit by a car, then it pains
me a lot.
BUNTHOURN THEAP:
They [the handlers] love them like his brother or her
sister. Sometimes they carry them like her baby or his baby.
MARK SHUKURU:
We know that the land mines are dangerous to our lives. If
our rats are able to discover land mines, then we save lives.
BUNTHOURN THEAP:
I hope that in the future people of Cambodia will get enough
land to farm. And their lives will be better off.
